From Siberia to Sydney: A sailor’s tale

August 18, 2013

Alena Trimming the Spinnaker (Hamilton Island 2012)

Alena Abrosimova has been a member of Balmain Sailing Club since 2011. She tells the story of how a girl from Siberia ended up sailing on the waters of Sydney Harbour.

There are many sailing clubs in Sydney, and Balmain Sailing Club is probably the friendliest of them all. Some other clubs might look intimidating and unwelcoming to anyone who does not have 20 years of sailing experience. Some unnamed clubs might even turn down volunteer help unless the candidate proves worthy of the honour. But at Balmain, if you show up before a race, keen to sail (ideally carrying a six pack!), and smile, chances are, one of the locals will push you on a boat and you’ll be handed a sheet. And if you show up consistently, they will teach you, they will include you in their sailing stories and their jokes, and before you know it you will be one of them.

A girl from Tomsk

I grew up in Tomsk, a university city in Siberia, where summers are short and winters are long and fierce. When I turned seven or eight, I decided that I wanted to be a sailor. Everything I knew about boats back then came from adventure books, and all of them claimed that having a woman on board is bad luck. That did not deter me in the least. If anything was going to stop me, it was the inconvenient fact that my hometown was very far inland and it seemed unlikely that I would ever even see the ocean.

I couldn’t dwell on it too much though, as I was too busy reading books about sailing, gluing pictures of boats into my special notebook and making my Dad build elaborate models of tall ships. I also sewed a sailor hat for myself. It looked pitiful, even to my own biased eye, but I insisted on wearing it around the house at all times. Combined with my thick glasses and thin blonde plaits (loose strands of hair everywhere), the hat made me look a little wild. My mum eventually gave up trying to dress me up as a princess and made a better sailor hat for me. These days, she just sighs when I tell her about sailing races in pouring rain and my strength training, so instead I show her photos of myself wearing pretty dresses and high heels to give her hope that one day I might become the princess she envisioned when I was little. I am not sure she believes me.

Many years later I got a job in Sydney and moved to Australia, an overwhelming experience in itself. One day a friend mentioned that she had done a sailing course through Balmain Sailing Club’s Balmain Sailing School - and had started sailing every weekend after that. This was my chance! After all those years I could finally get on the water and see what it was all about (even if I had lost my sailing hat by then). Gary, our instructor, never missed an opportunity to tell us something interesting about the harbour as he was educating us about points of sail and teaching us how to tack and gybe Intrepid, the Balmain Sailing School’s beautiful wooden sailboat. He also claimed that the group that sailed after us always brought along some cocktails. We were doubtful, but jealous. After the course finished, Gary told us that we should come to that year’s Balmain Regatta if we wanted to keep sailing.

The lows and highs of crewing

My first crewing experience that day was full of yelling and a feeling of hopelessness as I realised that everything on the boat had at least two or three names and I couldn’t possibly remember all of them. The yacht was also much bigger and very different from Intrepid. The only experienced crew member on that boat was a young guy with a bad hangover who ended up throwing up from the side while the skipper was running from the bow to the stern and back, madly rolling his eyes and shouting at the rest of us. I can only imagine how frustrating it was for him, an offshore sailor, to have a boat full of muppets. That day I just hoped that my silence was icy enough to tell him that I did not appreciate the yelling.

It did get better. The next time I was on a different boat, different rules: no screaming, more learning. I also started reading about sailing again, but this time less about pirates and more about headsail trim. I became a regular at the club, always happy to see familiar faces. Their friendliness was intoxicating. I was very far away from the city where I left my parents and friends, my tall ship models and my sailing notebook, but this place started to feel like home. And the sailing itself - well, I could not get enough of it. My non-sailing friends call me an addict sometimes and it is true.It is hard to explain the excitement of the race start when boats line up along the start line and someone inevitably tries to barge in.

Falling in love with Crossbow

The first boat I fell in love with was Crossbow. I would run away from work early and drive to Balmain every Tuesday and Friday so I could do both the Drummoyne and Balmain Twilights. Dave, the skipper, rarely if ever raised his voice; he was always patient and helpful. He also introduced me to Sophie, a former sailing instructor, who became my long-term sailing buddy and my best friend. All this time, my back muscles were getting stronger from grinding and my brain was getting used to the vocabulary. I loved the boat, loved the crew, loved sailing. One time the boat got full of water because the impeller wasn’t put back in correctly and water had sipped in through the tiny opening for three days. Another time we tried desperately to save Crossbow from damage, trying to push her away from other boats with our arms and legs, as we were forced onto the start boat by another yacht (a stupid act in the absence of our sensible skipper). Those were glorious days that I will always remember with fondness.

Back to Balmain

I have sailed on quite a few other boats from at least half a dozen clubs since then, but going back to Balmain always seems natural - it is like going home, after all. Balmain boats sail in other series so they can win, and I have been to a presentation in another club where most of the audience were sailors from Balmain Sailing Club, collecting their prizes. I sail as much as I can and the little girl in me who sewed that sailor hat could not be happier about that. I am finally living the dream, sailing in the most beautiful harbour in the world, learning something new every single race. I am now tempted to name every single person who I sailed with and who means a lot to me (hello Alpha Carinae and Balmain Tiger!) - but the list would be too long. Anyway, if you are reading this, you know who you are.